Christmas Songs
by FluffleNeCharka
Summary: Sasha hates Christmas, but Raz sings a song so... er, special, that Agent Nein finally perks up. [Oneshot.]


Author's Note: I know, I know, it's too early for Christmas fanfics, but this one came to me, and I thought it was kind of cute. If nothing else, it'll leave you with some great mental images.

I own nothing – Psychonauts is Tim Schaefer's brainchild, and the song used at the end of the fic belongs to a girl who rides my bus named Nicole Mann. I make no profit off of this and concede that the above two people own the game and song respectively.

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It's not that Sasha Nein hates Christmas.

It's just Christmas music, and there are enough good reasons for his dislike to make even shallow children like Kitty agree with him. He has a mental list of reasons for why hates Christmas music, Christmas songs, and, by _effect_, the Christmas _season_, though the holiday itself is perfectly fine.

First off, Christmas music is played in stores onwards from October 1st. Christmas music pops up on TV about mid October, and it annoys him, he says, that more than sixty (sometimes seventy) days before Christmas, he is bombarded by it. Before Halloween decorations have even been placed in the stores, half the back of Wal Mart has been dedicated to Christmas. And sure enough, anyone in the immediate area (by that, he means 'ten blocks around the store') can hear Jingle Bells day and night from the last day of September to the first day of January – and after that they have a Christmas special sale! Every other store up until the end of January is pushing the terrible pieces of Christmas crap no one wanted on passerby, all the while blaring tunes.

Second of all, it's the same songs he's been hearing since he set foot on American soil. The same tunes, the same singers, the same styles, again and again, repeated until the end of time. A million versions of Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Silent Night, all done in varying degrees of terrible, all unoriginal. These songs are older than him, older than his father, some older than his grandfather. They have worn out all welcome and if Sasha had any power over it, he swears, he would outlaw all songs older than him. There would be total silence for months if he did.

Then, there's how badly the songs are done. Every musically inclined soul on the planet Earth has, at some point, sung a Christmas song. Unfortunately, not every musically inclined soul sounded good while singing it or even knew a note of the music. In fact, Sasha is willing to bet that if he sat down with sheet music for a song and the song, any song at all, picked at random, not a single note would match. The quality of it sucks – if it can even be called quality! It's pitiful, that's what it is, pitiful faux singers whimpering into a microphone for a quick Christmas hit. In his entire life, Sasha has never heard a well sang piece of Christmas music.

This is without saying anything about the techno versions of these god forsaken songs. Besides taking twice as long as the original song, this particular genre seemed to have paid even _less_ attention to quality, if that was possible.

On top of all of this, the melodies were inconsistent. First a slow song, then a cheerful, fast, bouncy one, then a classical song. It was annoying. Sasha liked order and logic, not chaos and random selection. Would it kill Milla to make her parties more bearable by taking three seconds to organize the music? Maybe start off slow and end fast, or the opposite, just any form of organization would be appreciated. Really, if she was going to use the same songs every year, then some form of order, even alphabetization, would have made sense.

Christmas parties were even worse! Now, while he was trying to wish everyone well and have conversations, he had to do so with 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas' blaring in the background. If at some point Laboto had used Christmas music as torture, Sasha would have caved, he thought bitterly. It was bad enough to be stuck with unorganized music, but sometimes the words of the song and the words of people mixed – especially when he was drunk – and he couldn't tell who had said what.

Finally, he is so sick of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Not only did the children sing it constantly in the middle of summer (which disturbed him), the song made no sense. Surely a foggy Christmas would have occurred before the birth of Rudolph, and unless it was a worldwide fog, which was physically impossible, there was no way Rudolph did more than save Christmas for a single town. According to the song he also only did this once. For working once, in one town, Rudolph was the best of all reindeer. It was completely illogical, Sasha protested to Milla, who promptly accused him on thinking too much.

So, the Christmas after Razputin became an Agent, Sasha found himself sitting at a table in Milla's mind, waiting for the accursed Christmas party to be over. Agents were gathered, people were dancing and chatting, passing around Dream Fluffs and grooving to Jingle Bell Rock.

"HEY!" Raz shouted as loud as he could, jumping onto a table. The music died, as did all the chatter. "Tonight, I have a special song, dedicated to my girlfriend, Lili, and my best friend Sasha and Milla! Sing along if you know the words – it's time for 'Randol the Four Armed Cowboy'!"

People started to clap until they realized what Agent Aquato just said. Dead silence fell over the room once more, and people stopped what they were doing – drinking, eating, dancing, etc. – to watch in mixed awe and horror as Razputin launched into his song with some sort of weird, rock version of the music to Rudolph going on in the background.

"Randol the four armed cowboy,

Had a very shiny gun

And if you ever saw it

You would drop your pants and run.

All of the other cowboys

Used to laugh and call him names

They never let poor Randol

Join any poker games!

Then one rainy Saturday night,

The sheriff came to say,

'Randol with your gun so bright,

Won't you shoot my wife tonight?'

Then how the cowboys loved him

As they shouted out with glee,

'Randol the four armed cowboy,

You'll go down in history!'"

For a long, long moment, everyone just sort of stared. This was a complete 'what the hell' moment, but no one wanted to offend Razputin, he being the youngest Agent there. Milla was frozen in place, eyebrows raised. Truman had been handing Oleander a Dream Fluff when the song started; the candy remained suspended between the two men, unnoticed. Quentin and Phoebe were silent, and they were almost never struck speechless. It seemed no one knew how to break the moment.

Then Agent Nein laughed out loud.

The audience erupted into applause, and Razputin beamed happily. His deed done, he proceeded to take several bows before hopping off the table, high fiving Milla, and strolling over to Sasha's table. The German Psychonaut was grinning widely. Raz smiled back and sat down beside him.

"So, did you like my song?" Razputin asked with childish enthusiasm.

Sasha's amusement radiated from him as he answered.

"Of course. I love your Christmas songs."

And so he did.


End file.
